


Smoke Music

by cher



Category: The Wood Wife - Terri Windling
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Vision Quest, Yuletide Treat, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 20:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: Fox wants the Sight.





	Smoke Music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lomedet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomedet/gifts).



Fox sat across from Maggie at their little kitchen table.  He was getting better at thinking of it as theirs, but old Cooper's ghost would probably always be there with him. Perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing. 

They were discussing the Sight again. Fox couldn't let it go. He worked hard on learning the mountain, coming to understand it. He knew that he heard its rhythms and moods and the changes that came with each season. He was close to knowing what it felt like when one of the mages was influencing things, a certain snap and spin in the air, a particular note in the coyote's song. He'd seen the little sprites in the smoke, all those months ago, and he'd hoped that after that he might see true. But he couldn't see them, and it pained him. 

It was true that now and again he noticed that the saguaro did dance, even when he was watching. It was true that he sometimes saw one of the little spirits dash shyly away as he passed, just out of the corner of his eye. But to see them right there in front of him, when they weren't exerting any effort to show themselves—that was still beyond him. 

Maggie thought Fox should ask his mother, who was, as it turned out, the Woodmage. Fox disagreed. 

"I think that if my mother had wanted me to have the Sight, she would have given it to me already."

"Perhaps she doesn't realise you don't have it? She's a lovely person, but she doesn't always seem the most aware of human nuances."

"Then all the more reason not to ask her. No, I'd rather one of the others. I know Tomás says you can't choose them, but when I think about it, all the human artists had their own special relationship with one of them. Anna had the Nightmage. Cooper had my mother, the Woodmage. Juan had the Floodmage, as much as a disaster as that was. You...I know you said the Spine Witch was the one to give you the Sight, but you know Crow the best. I'd like to know the Windmage, for myself. Twice he's shown himself to me. Perhaps he'd like my music."

"The Windmage is dangerous, Fox. They all are, of course, but the Windmage brought the poacher. I don't know. He's even less of the earth than the others, surely."

"But we shape them," Fox argued. "The Windmage wears the shape that Anna Naverra gave him, but perhaps he would become more gentle with me. I don't fear him."

Maggie pursed her lips, but didn't argue. "Have you asked your sisters?"

He shook his head. "That wouldn't be right. And I don't think it's in their power to give."

"Well," said Maggie, "Maybe you should give it a bit longer. Your way, Tomás' way—it works. Maybe you're a different kind of artist, not so mad as the rest of us. Calmer. Give it a little more time."

Fox said he would. It was true that there was something that felt right about it, the idea of gaining the Sight through his own dedication. He'd sit vigil again, at least once for every change of the seasons, and then see where time had taken him. 

*

Tomás found him that night, sitting his vigil in the willow lodge. Fox stared into the smoke and played the song of the mountains on the copal wood flute. Outside, where he couldn't see, Pepe was on guard in his coyote shape, and the megroots tumbled into the moonlight. 

"Why is it you seek this vision, Fox?" Tomás asked, sitting down cross-legged.

Fox stopped playing and rolled the tobacco he'd brought. He threw a pinch into the fire, inhaled, and passed it to Tomás, who accepted with a nod.

"I want to know this place as well as you do, as Maggie does. I love it, I was born of it. I want to see more, and understand the mountain's songs."

Tomás looked at him steadily. "They bring disaster to humans just as they bring joy. Will you lose yourself to their games as others before you?"

Fox looked into the flames. "I try to be content, but I don't want jealousy to spoil what I have with Maggie. I don't want to resent her for something she has no control over. Please, Tomás, can you tell me how to learn to see?"

"Sit vigil here tonight, and sleep when sleeping seems good. Perhaps someone will come by. Or perhaps the mountains themselves will show you what you want to see."

They sat together then, for a long time, each fixing his gaze on the flames and smoking the tobacco until it was gone. Fox raised the flute to his lips and played again, sending his song soaring through the gaps in the lodge and into the wind. 

Eventually, Fox slept, and in the coldest hour before dawn, long past the midnight hour, Tomás touched his work-roughed old fingers to Fox's eyelids, soft like the petals of the peas flowering in his garden.

Then he left the willow lodge, nodded to the patient Pepe with his head on his paws, and walked back to his cabin. Obsessions did no one any good, and he judged that Fox would settle again now that he had what he wanted. No ambitions and bargains for that boy; he wasn't the kind.

That was the domain of old Crow, and the Sight or the lack thereof had never stopped _him_ from poking his nose in if he thought there was fun to be had.

*

Maggie herself looked different to him now, smiling at him from the kitchen table. He saw Black Maggie, the poet who walked the spiral path and returned under her own power. She'd looked worldly before, and now she was otherworldly, or rather so strongly of this world and its deeper mysteries that it was as if she was part of the mountain herself. And she smiled for him.

Fox saw the megroots outside, moving among the ironwood, and the Spine Witch shuffle by.

He went to Maggie and embraced her, and laughed when she held a flour tortilla, warm from the pan, to his lips.

He'd play well tonight, and perhaps he would put her poems to his music. 


End file.
